Nobody puts Garth Brooks in a corner, certainly not the Garden

TD Garden officials found themselves before the Boston Licensing Board today, apologizing for being helpless in the face of a force like Garth Brooks.

More specifically, they were there to answer a police citation for "failure to disperse patrons in a safe, timely and orderly fashion" on the night of Jan. 24. Police say the area around and under the Garden - in particular, North Station - was so full of people exiting one Garth Brooks concert and people waiting to enter the next that the result was pedestrian gridlock that kept innocent commuters just trying to get home on commuter rail from getting to their trains on time.

BPD Sgt. Det. Robert Mulvey's citation referred specifically to the Garden's west side, where he said the arena had just one staffer trying to direct ticketholders for the late show to go to the Legends Way entrance on the east side. But he said he doubted more staffers would have helped much: "I don't know how anybody could've managed that."

He said the solution is fairly simple: In the future, the Garden should allow more time between such back to back concerts.

Garden officials agreed that's a great idea but said artists gonna artist: They try and they try to convince entertainers to adhere to schedules and then they just don't and there's nothing they can do. In this case, they said Brooks started his 7 p.m. show at 7:30 p.m. and then, as attorney Stephen Miller said, he and the audience were "grooving" so much that he added a couple of encore songs at the end. And at that point, you're not going to just yank the artist off stage, because then you have 15,000 angry people on your hands, he said.

"Artists are going to pretty much do what they think is best for their business or performance that night," Miller said. "Unfortunately, there's no negotiating," Garden security director James Mayall said. The Garden had 271 staffers on hand that night - in addition to numerous BPD detail officers and had gone through a practice run earlier in the week, officials said.

Mulvey was not happy with the answer.

"The thing that puzzles me is that the artist (and his entourage) apparently gets the last word and trumps public safety," he said. "It just seems to be all for Garth Brooks's convenience."

The board decides Thursday what action, if any, to take.